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Let’s say your metal band is playing a headlining club gig. At the end of the night, the promoter hands you an envelope containing $200. Is that a fair share?

Or say you’re a R&B singer with a CD released by an independent record company. Your label sends you quarterly royalty checks, but how do you know if the amount is correct?

Or imagine you’re the composer & lyricist of a popular country song that gets played on an on-demand streaming service. You get regular checks from your performing rights organization (PRO) for this use, but how do you know if the rate you’re getting is fair compared to what other songwriters get for plays of their songs?

On Friday, January 2, news broke that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will be voting on its long awaited Net Neutrality rules in February. The regular FCC meeting in February is scheduled for February 26. As Brian Fung of the Washington Post writes: read more

How is it possible that a single company can be America’s biggest cable television provider, its largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) and also own a major motion picture and television studio (NBC-Universal)? What happens when that company is allowed to get even bigger by gobbling up another huge ISP and cable provider?

Whether you’re looking for some holiday gift ideas or planning to spend some downtime by the fire this winter, here’s a selection of music books we especially enjoyed this year. We suggest picking them up at your local independent bookseller. Have we missed one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments!

I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway
by Greg Kot (Scribner)read more

When music is played on a non-interactive digital service like Pandora, Sirius XM, or cable radio, payment for the sound recording copyright is collected and distributed by SoundExchange, a non-profit performance rights organization. As we detail in our handy “Music and How the Money Flows” chart, this revenue is divided up in a standard formula: 45% goes to the featured artist, 50% goes to the sound recording copyright owner (usually a label), and 5% goes to the AFM/SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distrbution Fund, for distribution to backing players, session musicians, and backing vocalists. We’re fond of this system because it treats all artists equally, ensuring direct payment that can’t be held against recoupable debt to a label, with equitable splits.

But what happens if you’re a self-released artist who doesn’t work with a label, but owns the copyrights to your sound recordings? You are entitled to collect both the artist share and the label share yourself. Unfortunately, many artists don’t know this, and end up missing out on money they ought to be collecting, because they’ve only registered for the artist share. Other artists haven’t registered with SoundExchange at all.

CD Baby, a popular distribution service with a large userbase of mostly self-released artists, recently announced a change to their terms of service that allows them to collect the label share from SoundExchange for their roster of distributed artists. This move was met with some minor controversy, as indeed, artists are entitled to collect that money themselves directly from SoundExchange, without the administrative cut that CD Baby charges. We decided to go directly to the source: CD Baby CEOTracy Maddux answered our questions this week via email.

You may already know that FMC is against the proposed merger between massive Internet/cable provider/NBC-Universal owner Comcast and the slightly less massive Time Warner Cable. Back in August of 2014, FMC and Writers Guild of America West (WGAW)—the folks who write the movies and TV shows you know and love—filed a “joint petition to deny” with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), urging them to block the deal.

Well, the list of folks against the merger just got bigger. Today, saw the launch of the Stop Mega Comcast Coalition, which includes FMC and WGAW, along with a diverse array of other groups who don’t want to see Comcast become even more powerful.

On the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), there is a little cabin called The Ché Café, but it is actually much more than a simple vegan café. Since its founding in 1980, it’s grown to become a landmark of San Diego’s music scene, helping launch the careers of countless bands and hosting an array of internationally known touring acts like Green Day, Pennywise, At the Drive-In, Album Leaf and Jimmy Eat World. But persistent battles with the college administration have put the venue in peril.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Athens, Georgia had been listed by Rolling Stone alongside Graceland, the Ryman Auditorium, and Sun Studios as one of the South’s musical treasures. The band now internationally known as R.E.M. played their very first concert inside the building on April 5, 1980. Even so, the main part of the church was demolished ten years later to make room for condominiums, despite its significance to the American music culture. The only remaining part of the building is the steeple, but it still stands as a reminder of St. Mary’s musical significance. read more

Commercial soft rock radio stations around the country frequently play Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You” – a song written by Dolly Parton. Who receives public performance royalties for this consistent terrestrial airplay of the song?

A. Dolly Parton and Dolly’s publisher
B. The estate of Whitney Houston, the performer
C. The record label that released Whitney’s recording (Arista)
D. All of the above: (1) Dolly, (2) Dolly’s publisher, (3) Whitney’s estate and (4) Arista read more